Efficient magic find affected bag opening help needed!

[Rococo.8347]

Tonight was my first time actually organising a character to go to Silverwastes with some extra buffs to try and make use of this all whilst Lunar Festival was on - hoping to get better drops than I normally do.

I had around 3 stacks each of green and blue unid, almost a stack of yellow unid 5 pvp/wvw tracks worth of boxes and 2 weeks of divine envelopes.

• it didn't go so well as I was very slow and disorganised and panicking re buff timers. I had All the buffs I could get apart from the old style bonfire buff, BL one, and the guild one ( though I used a 15% banner at the map) and im only 200 base magic find, this gave me 670 which still seems low compared to what ive heard in chat?

More importantly I was soooo slow because I had no invisible bag, so ended up having to hand salvage until I had cleared the unids, my 100 bag space was constantly over filling, I had no idea if there was a quicker way to get the silverwastes buff back after leaving the map to dump in the bank because I only had one express bank on me, I ended up going back to my RIBA squad and doing the whole map again from scratch which took ages, I sold all runes/sigils without checking and salvaged all yellows after checking for staff and Greatsword,.

I only have a few of the item booster buffs (and bank express) and yet managed to use up the whole 2 hours of one clearing everything I had - I thought I was fairly organised and prepared but obviously not!

I would really appreciate some tips and advice from veterans of mass bag opening esp how to do quickly so that I can get more use out of my buffs and also if I have to do the whole RIBA each time I want to do this bag opening

Also I assume those are the only bags that will actually be affected by magic find?

[Stevieboy.4192]

In my experience, MF does very little. I was getting, on average, better drops before it was introduced.There are numbers and stats floating about somewhere.I guess what I'm saying is, don't read much into MF and boosts etc, as overall it does pretty much nothing to improve the RNG of this game.If it does, it's not enough to concentrate time and energy on.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"Stevieboy.4192" said:In my experience, MF does very little. I was getting, on average, better drops before it was introduced.There are numbers and stats floating about somewhere.I guess what I'm saying is, don't read much into MF and boosts etc, as overall it does pretty much nothing to improve the RNG of this game.If it does, it's not enough to concentrate time and energy on.

Your experience is leading you astray. With >950% MF, common (aka blue) gear no longer drops from common unidentified gear, not a single one. Each bit of MF changes the odds a bit, so that you are less and less likely to get junk or white gear, more likely to get masterwork or better.

The most recent exhaustive research from Testifye is up and the results are unambiguous.https://sites.google.com/view/gw2-tipm/research/unidentified-gear

Most of us don't realize it because we, as humans, are horrible at remembering what loot we actually get. We tend to remember bad luck better than good, tend to think of "just average" luck as "bad", and tend to discount a lucky streak (because we were "due"). So unless one keeps track of every drop, it's pretty hard to say "on average better drops before" versus after (and incidentally, MF has been in the game since launch).

[Vavume.8065]

@Rococo.8347 said:

More importantly I was soooo slow because I had no invisible bag,

You are already aware of your biggest mistake, which was not using an invisible bag, using one will speed up the process by a huge margin, I'm not exaggerating in saying that what took you 2 hours before will prob take 30-45 mins if you just had an invisible bag, trust me I know since I also made the same mistake the first time around.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

Maxing Magic Find

The wiki has a guide for maximizing MF:https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Magic_Find#Maximizing_magic_find

And one of the guys who opens a lot of containers and publishes the results produced another guide, which some might find easier:https://redd.it/7xrvy3

@"Rococo.8347" said:I would really appreciate some tips and advice from veterans of mass bag opening esp how to do quickly so that I can get more use out of my buffs and also if I have to do the whole RIBA each time I want to do this bag opening

Organizing

First, be prepared

• Move as much stuff out of your bank (and material storage) as possible, to alt/mule toons if you have to. You can move them back after

• Clear out as much inventory as possible from your "opener"

• Have a copper-fed and a silver-fed salvage kit. You can use several mystic salvage kits in place of the silver-fed. Ideally, keep them in shared inventory (but bank is fine).

• You want several "Bank Access Express", so you can get to your bank without leaving silverwastes (vendors to sell you stuff and to buy junk and sigils/runes are in the main camp).

• Have at least one "invisible" bag to store the unID gear, so it doesn't get salvaged.

• Don't use any buffs until you're ready to do the following

Second, use an assembly line process. There are probably over a dozen useful techniques, so this is just the one I use:

• With the bank access open & the vendor window panel to sell, I use the "open all" on the unID gear, starting with Rare (where it matters the most to have the best buffs)
• You will hit "encumbered" quickly.
• On the left (inventory side), I filter for "exotic" and double click those to the bank.
• I then move the encumbered item into inventory
• Copper-Fed is used to salvage all masterwork and lower. After which I deposit.
• I sell to the vendor all the minor sigils & runes.
• The mystic/silver-fed is used to salvage all rares. Optional: sell GS, staffs, and maybe swords on the TP (takes a bit longer, but worth up to 10-20s more than salvaging)
• I sell all the major runes & sigils (optional save them in the bank; there are things you can do to convert them into more than vendor value, but it takes time; not worth it while you're learning efficiency in my opinion)
• Repeat with your unID gear, until you run out of room
• Then decide if you want to take 10 minutes to sell your exotics and continue, or stop for the day and save the rest for later.

Containers Affected by Magic Find

Also I assume those are the only bags that will actually be affected by magic find?The main ones are unID gear, all the envelopes from Lunar New Year. Secondarily, everything that drops from PvP/WvW reward tracks that takes the place of "killed foe drops" also is affected by Magic Find. However, since there are usually fewer than 1000 of these to deal with at a time I don't bother worrying about boosting MF much. Just whatever is easy.

[artemis.6781]

There's a 30 mins (sarcasm) wooden potatoes video that basically says unless your running metas 24/7, MF really isn't worth it for the average player opening bags. I personally have never gotten mine over 600%. Even at that rate, I did have some regular blue drops. But, feel free to watch his video.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"artemis.6781" said:There's a 30 mins (sarcasm) wooden potatoes video that basically says unless your running metas 24/7, MF really isn't worth it for the average player opening bags. I personally have never gotten mine over 600%. Even at that rate, I did have some regular blue drops. But, feel free to watch his video.

That doesn't contradict the evidence, although it's a misleading statement. We know the following:

• Magic Find makes a measurable difference in loot.
• The difference is modest and not easily noticed except with large amounts of loot.
• At some value of MF (above 800, below 950), there won't be any common drops from common unidentified gear.

The ideal time to use MF boosters is when you expect to get lots of MF-affected loot. That is not during some of the metas, e.g. during Auric Basin, there are relatively few foe deaths. There's no research about whether MF matters for the loot phase (opening the exalted chests), but even if there is, it's only for a few minutes, so it doesn't qualify for the "running metas 24/7" scenario.

The better times to use MF are during the old style farms, such as Orrian temples (and other objectives) when the kills/minute rate is high for most of the time. Silverwastes is the current meta that comes closest to this scenario, in that all the events require killing foes quickly and the loot phase is definitely affected by MF.

tl;dr more MF always matters. The question is how much effort is it worth to boost it at all (e.g. cheap MF food) and when is it worth maximizing it. It's easy to use a MF-enrichment and MF food, so I recommend those. It's only worth boosting MF to the max when running specific farms, of which metas don't usually qualify.

[Stevieboy.4192]

I have had two drops worth 30g in over 12 months.I remember them. There was two... kinda easy to remember..I remember grinding for that long with little reward for my time.Stats are all well and good but decent loot just isn't dropping for me.MF may have been in since launch but essences to boost it wasn't.I can only speak from my experience, I'm sure some people don't have the same experience as me.(As an aside, since lunar year bonus finished, my drops have improved slightly.. shrug)

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Stevieboy.4192 said:I have had two drops worth 30g in over 12 months.I remember them.I remember grinding for that long with little reward for my time.Stats are all well and good but decent loot just isn't dropping for me.MF may have been in since launch but essences to boost it wasn't.I can only speak from my experience, I'm sure some people don't have the same experience as me.

First, there aren't all that many drops in the game worth 30g. Further, most of them tend to be from things that aren't known to affected by magic find. But even if that wasn't true, we don't know how many foes you killed (or MF-influenced boxes you opened) during that time. Most importantly, high MF doesn't mean you'll get lots of high-value drops; it means you'll get fewer low-rarity drops and more lower-rarity drops. And that's demonstrable only over high volumes, because the impact is subtle.

I'm not sure why you are making a distinction between MF-via-gear and MF-via-essences; they work the same. During the same time since, we also have new ways of boosting Magic Find that didn't exist back then.

Essentially, this game's economy functions by throwing a tons of low-value loot at us and giving us the choice on how to spend it. Even a little MF improves the value of that loot, giving one more opportunities in the long run. In contrast, other games tend to throw very little loot and offer some really important high-value drops (sometimes to reach Best-in-Slot gear, which this game doesn't offer).

And finally, sure, we can each only speak about our own experience. And that would have been fine except you also said:

I guess what I'm saying is, don't read much into MF and boosts etc, as overall it does pretty much nothing to improve the RNG of this game.If it does, it's not enough to concentrate time and energy on.That's a comment about other people's experiences and implies a recommendation about what people should choose to do. Overall, MF does a lot to improve the RNG of the game, it's enough to make it worth spending some time & energy on. How much time and how much energy will depend on each person's style of play: if you tend to play PvP or WvW or low-kill-rate metas, less effort makes sense. If you do events with high kill counts or open unID boxes in bulk, then more effort makes sense.

tl;dr in general, everyone ends up being better off with more magic find. Some people won't notice due to too little loot affected by MF and some will have bad luck. And still others won't see their expectations of high-value loot met, because this game doesn't offer all that much. Thus, it's worth _some_effort for everyone to keep increasing MF and for some, it's worth lots of effort to maximize it.

[Stevieboy.4192]

Noticed you didn't quote the part when I said in MY experience MF etc, etc.It was in the two lines above the part you quoted.I was trying to say to not concentrate too much on MF and just get on and do stuff.In the grand scheme of things there are other things to concentrate on...MF is not the be all and end all.I used to worry about raising it but as, for ME...it has little or no effect..Regardless if I'm doing a map meta or whatever..Usually soloing VB events, if I'm honest..The last 30g drop I got was a precursor (not a valuable one, hence the 30g) that dropped from a VB beetle that hit me up therear as I was opening a crate...So crack on and enjoy the game...I just won't be putting another year of grinding (or money on expansions) into it, as for ME at least it is not worth it.

[Rococo.8347]

Thanks all,

especially your bag sorting tips Illconceived Was Na! I had forgotten that you could type in search words to filter out exotics to transfer, I now have a hidden bag aswell.

Ive never had a 30g plus drop incidentally in the entire time ive played - apart from I got one precursor 1 year ago which was the cheap one ( chaos) my exotic drops are never worth more than 2ish gold, I can still remember the time in a stack of pvp boxes I got an ascended box AND an exotic off the same roll because its that rare for me!

I will be honest I didn't notice a huge difference, maybe higher exotics than normal but only 1 ascended box which for several tracks of pvp and wvw seems the same as with my usual magic find, possibly worse, that said I have appalling RNG a lot of the time.

• if anyone has a technique for getting your SW buffs back up fast if you have to leave ( because I have very few bank express) that would be good - am I supposed to only go into squads that are close to Vinewrath? can I still get the basic 150% buff built up in time?